


All the Roads

by pancake5882



Category: Villains Series - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Behavior, Gen, Introspection, Religious Discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 01:03:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18042500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pancake5882/pseuds/pancake5882
Summary: Body bearing new scars for the first time in fifteen years, beliefs shaken by half a decade at EON, Eli contemplates God, Victor, and his own place in the world.This work diverges from canon near the end of Vengeful. Needless to say, there are *major* spoilers for Vengeful in here, and you shouldn't read this fic if you haven't yet read Vengeful (unless you don't mind spoilers, of course).CW for Eli-typical self harm (he attempts surgery on himself).





	All the Roads

**Author's Note:**

> I loved reading Vengeful, but after I finished it, I started thinking about another way it could have ended, if Eli had survived the final fight. I wanted to explore the idea, and the result is this story. It diverges from canon after Sydney shoots Eli.
> 
> Eli's views on God and morality are his own, and in no way reflect mine. In case you were wondering about that.

The last things Eli remembered from before his latest death, were terror and pain as the scientist Haverty sliced him open, and then the desperate battle in the old warehouse, first him and Victor against Haverty, and then him against Victor. Eli, bleeding and not healing, still unfocused thanks to the drugs in his system. Victor, scrawny and wounded and already half dead on his feet.

Even so weakened, Eli should have been able to defeat a dying man. But it hadn't been Victor who had died that night. Instead Sydney, the girl who could raise the dead, had arrived just in time to save Victor, firing three bullets into Eli's back. 

~~

Eli woke up two days later, thoughts hazy with blood loss and pain, in a hotel room far from Haverty's makeshift lab. He tried to stand, and found that he couldn’t. An elderly woman hurried over, and told him not to move too much, because he was still healing from his injuries.

It turned out it hadn’t been an old woman, but rather the shapeshifting EO, June. She wanted him for his knowledge and his skills, to locate the girl Sydney. She thought finding Victor might be the best way to do it: after all, where Victor was, Sydney would soon be. At that point Eli was still too confused to care much, except when his ears sharpened at Victor's name. He just wished his body would heal, so his legs could work and he could find his old enemy more easily.

While he waited for his body to heal, he used the computer June found for him, hunting for leads that would take him to Victor. He didn't bother to look for Sydney: the girl and her unusual power weren't his priority, only June's. June let the matter slide: she was willing to be patient.

But the weeks passed, and while his mind did gradually clear and his wounds closed, while his regeneration ability returned, fixing his injuries far more rapidly than any human could heal, some things didn’t go back to normal. His healing remained slower than in had been: injuries taking a day to heal instead of a minute. 

His spine, where Sydney had fired the gun into his back, healed over. The nerves stopped singing with pain whenever he moved. But something in his spinal cord didn't reconnect no matter how long he waited and how hard he tried to find motion in his legs. From the waist down he was paralyzed, and nothing seemed to change that.

Eli theorized that Haverty’s serum had temporarily turned him human, and that the damage to his spine, like the scars on his back, might no longer be effected by his regenerative ability. A relic of his human life, not changeable by his EO power.

His hypothesis was enforced by the scars on his sides where Haverty had started cutting into him. They had closed slowly, and the lines never faded away. He tested further, using a scalpel to cut himself, and the cuts he made healed cleanly, thanks to his power. But Haverty’s scars remained. His spinal injury remained. In that lab, for a few minutes, he had been human again, and the proof showed on his skin and in his bones.

One time, while June was out looking for a lead, Eli collected all the tools from the house, and set up a mirror. He lay down on his stomach so he could look in the mirror and see his back, and used the tools to try to remove the damaged piece of his spine. Not because he was looking forward to more pain, but because he wanted to see if he could somehow fix the damage, trick his body into healing the human scars. Even though he knew it never would.

His weakened healing ability made it easier to slice open his back, but the blood made it impossible to see what he was doing, and the pain dragged him in and out of consciousness, until June returned to find him on the floor in a pool of his own blood, breathing shallowly, trembling from the pain, a razor blade clutched loosely in his fingers.

June took the shape of a huge, muscular man, and carried Eli to a bed, ignoring his delirious protests. She bandaged him, and lightheartedly told him not to chop himself open again. 

He’d done a lot of damage to himself. It took three days for the pain in his spine to mostly fade. He forced himself into his wheelchair every day though, gritting his teeth against the sharp stabbing sensation in his spine. It reminded him not so much of the pain of Sydney's gunshot, but instead of the pain from the collar EON had forced him to wear.

The damage he had done to his spine healed over time, but he still couldn't move his legs, no matter how hard he tried.

It was funny, Eli reflected as he settled himself into the wheelchair. Victor was the master of pain, the one who could bend nerves to his will and make people step aside with barely a thought. But really, at this point Eli had as wide a reference for pain as Victor did. He knew the different pains of burning and decaying, the differences between crushing and stabbing. He knew how it felt to be torn apart versus sliced apart, the sharpness of a gunshot versus a that of a belt. The only difference in their massive experience of pain, was that while Victor could blunt his pain or give it to others, Eli was only ever able to experience it himself.

But they both had an unusually intimate understanding of suffering.

Eli hadn’t seen Victor since that night in Haverty’s lab. Not the real flesh and blood Victor, nor the younger, imaginary Victor who had kept Eli company in his cell at EON. And even though it was madness, even though he knew their fifteen years of mutual hatred stood between them, a part of him was starting to miss the cruel, cold man.

A part of his twisted, cold mind missed their mutual understanding and matched ambition, the way they both put aside common human morals to make way for their plans.

There really was nothing quite like vivisection and five years of confinement to shake up your view of the world.

~~

Once upon a time, Eli had been deeply religious. His devout faith had helped him through the darkest hours of his life, the one guiding light that led him forward, while the people he cared for turned against him, or simply crumbled away like dust on the wind. He’d kept following it even when the weight of his life felt unbearable, because he knew God was testing him, and because he knew God would never give him more suffering than he could survive. 

The time he’d spent on the operating table, trying not to scream as his body was torn apart again and again and again, had finally made him question his faith. His previous pain, he’d understood eventually. It had made him stronger, braver, more cunning. But hours in the operating room, straining to breathe as they restricted his oxygen and sliced him to pieces, had finally made him question it all. 

At the time, he hadn’t seen the pattern to it. He’d seen only the senseless pain, the endless terror, the confining walls of a cell barely larger than he was. There was no purpose to it. If God had ever guided him, then God had finally turned away. Perhaps God was punishing him for something, but during all the hours of his torture Eli was never certain what he'd done to deserve such a terrible punishment.

But now, through the ache in his spine and the first new scars he’d had in years, he once again saw the truth.

God had placed him in Haverty’s hands, so that the scientist could create a cure, and actual cure, to the EO disease. God had put him through Hell, because He knew Eli could survive it. Because He knew that Eli's suffering was the only way to create the serum, because He knew that there was a kinder way to heal the EOs, a way that didn't involve killing them. 

The path ahead was clear now, and Eli could feel God's hand guiding him forward again. Toward the blue serum Haverty had created, so that he could share it with the ruined EOs of the world, granting them release from their curse.

And yet, Eli hesitated. He didn't know whether he wanted to serve God any more, not after what he had endured. His father's cruelty. The loss of his aunt and uncle. Victor's betrayal. Serena's control. His body's endless taunts as it kept him alive no matter what happened. Eli had been devoted, and his only reward had been new forms of suffering.

He knew who had the serum. It had to be with Victor, Victor who was dying as his power ate him from the inside, who was desperate to find any possible cure to his disease. Who had been there in the lab that night, and had seen what the serum could do.

Eli didn't know if he wanted to serve God any more, but he did know that he wanted to find Victor, and the serum. June didn't care about the serum, but she cared about finding Victor, finding Sydney. And God, it seemed, wanted Eli to find the serum, so the EOs could be cured. Eli didn't know how long he was going to cooperate with their plans, but for the moment all their paths aligned. Every road led to Victor Vale, and Eli fully intended to use every bit of assistance he could to locate his old friend, and the cure to his disease of immortality.


End file.
